University of Kansas professor and director of Monarch Watch Chip Taylor regaled the audience with tales of butterflies and the news that National Geographic Television recently filmed a program featuring MW volunteers tagging butterflies with radio tags. Until now, radio tags were too heavy to use with monarchs, but innovations in technology allowed several butterflies to be tagged. Tracking them, however, proved to be extremely difficult as the monarch can fly as much as 60 miles per day. Watch National Geographic TV next spring to see if trackers were able to locate Big Boy.

Eco-journalist Simran Sethi introduced "the 4th R" --relate-- to the well-known three R's of reduce, reuse, recycle. Coming to Kansas from the East Coast challenged her assumptions about who is an environmentalist. After asking herself who is greener, someone in an organic cotton t-shirt operating a computer and "talking" about the environment or a farmer working the land, she realized that asking the right questions and understanding a person's frame of reference is very important to discussions about natural resources. Sethi's book on environmental elitism will be published by HarperCollins sometime next year.

On Saturday, Mark Manning shared insights into working with schools to create, maintain, and incorporate gardens into their curriculum. Like many people, Manning learned gardening skills and a love for the land as a child from his grandmother. He uses the gardening experience -- and his training in theater -- to teach kids about nutrition, science, and cultural history. As director of the Kansas City, Kansas Community Gardens Project, he works monthly with first-, fourth-, and sixth-graders, getting them out in the dirt to plant and harvest vegetables, learn about the different plants and the cultural history connected with them. The students then help cook the vegetables and, of course, eat them!

Conference-goers were able to learn even more about current trends in environmental education from concurrent sessions, exhibits, and field studies. Video clips from the conference are available on the KansasKACEE channel on YouTube.

The conference is hosted by the Kansas Association for Conservation and Environmental Education (KACEE). Next year's conference will be held on 5-6 November in Salina.